News Story

Pulitzer Prize-winner and Tampa Bay Times reporter Lane DeGregory visited IU’s Media School last week to discuss her experience and share what she’s learned as a narrative writer.

DeGregory visited professor of practice Kelley Benham French’s narrative writing and news editing classes as well as Words and Pictures, which combines three classes to form teams to produce enterprise stories. During her class visits, she discussed everything from interviewing and getting sources to trust you to editing to the use of multimedia in feature stories.

“The thing I like the most is talking about stories, especially hearing students’ stories,” DeGregory said in an interview. “We probably talked to three or four students yesterday and talked through their stories.”

DeGregory, who won her first Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for “The Girl in the Window,” said she has always had a love of storytelling. Naturally curious, she wanted to be a journalist since she was 5 years old. She wrote for her eighth grade newspaper and worked her way up to the editor-in-chief at The Cavalier Daily at the University of Virginia.

Each class DeGregory visited, she talked about different aspects of journalism. In narrative journalism, she focused on getting information and documents.

“We talked pretty in-depth about interviewing, like getting sources to open up, getting people to trust you, how to ask the hard questions, what kind of questions to ask,” DeGregory said.

In news editing, she gave suggestions about how the collaboration of reporters and editors makes great stories. DeGregory explained to the class how important it is to have a good editor, one that understands you as a person and your writing. Personally, she said, she wants to work with editors who also are great writers first.

Professor of practice Tom French is one of the Words and Pictures professors. Reporters, photojournalists and designers work in teams on semester-long projects, and French teaches the reporting students. In that class, DeGregory discussed the reporter and photographer relationship, and the process of turning a narrative word story into a multimedia story.

“Meeting Lane gave me a better understanding of her stories,” said senior Hannah Boone. “You can tell how much she cares and genuinely gets to know the people she writes for.”

This was not DeGregory’s first visit to campus. She spoke to Tom French’s Behind the Prize class a year ago. Her friendship with the French’s opened the door to IU for her. After college, DeGregory worked at the Virginian Pilot covering “every beat you could imagine” before she realized narrative writing was her true calling. She applied to be on the Pilot’s first ever “writing team” and was one of four journalists selected. At a narrative writing conference in California, she met St. Petersburg times reporter Tom French, who had just won his Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.

When the St. Petersburg Times had an opening in 2000, DeGregory got the job, and two years later Kelley Benham joined the St. Pete team and sat right next to DeGregory at the features desk.

“We were each other’s secret editors,” DeGregory said. “You know, you have people that you share stuff with before you give it to your editor.”

Kelley Benham French and DeGregory still are collaborating. French is DeGregory’s editor on her current project for the Tampa Bay Times, and the pair couldn’t be happier. The distance hasn’t proven to be a problem, French said, but it’s not quite like old times.

“I miss being able to spin around in my chair and turn my screen towards Lane and say, ‘does this work?’” said French, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. “I miss that.”

DeGregory’s story is due out at the beginning of December.